Sometimes, looks are everything. Especially on social. Which is why visual marketing continues to grow in optical leaps and bounds across stills, video and infographics.

Ahead of the silly season here's the latest from the vivid world of visual marketing.

Snapshot

While we're easily distracted, visual stimulus can help keep our attention – at least for a little bit.

Over 81% of users only skim read text-based content, however posts with videos attached are three times more likely to attract longer engagement.

Buyer buy in

Users are 80% more likely to seek out more information about a brand after watching a product video.

While tweets with images attract 18% more clicks, 89% more Favourites, and over 100% more retweets.

Platform frenzy

2015 has been kind to the visual-based platforms, with growth pretty much uniform across the board.

This year Instagram's active user base has grown by 64%, while Tumblr and Pinterest's active user base has doubled.'

Videos viewed in Facebook's News Feed have doubled from 4 billion to 8 billion in less than one year.

On trend?

Visual marketing doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. 

By 2018 it's estimated 84% of internet will be visual, the majority of this being made up by video.